Biohub coordinates a $1.8B biological-data commitment

What's this about?

The consortium combines funding, data, compute and measurement infrastructure for open predictive-biology resources. The total includes more than $500M of prior NIH-supported investment, not just new cash; DeepMind, Isomorphic Labs and Meta contribute $300M collectively.

What exactly is virtual cell?

A predictive computer model of how a cell behaves, intended to help choose experiments before running them in a physical lab.

What's the community saying?

1. High-throughput measurements and standardized ground truth may matter more than simply buying more compute.
2. Readers question the tension between an open-data initiative and removal of other public research datasets.
3. Some explore whether pooled spare computing resources could support collective research.